Show the Lights
by Anti-Logic
Summary: She has lived through the apocalypse and the death of almost everyone she ever loved. Her teenage angst can wait. In which this is a terrible time for a sexual identity crisis and Rose Lalonde comes of age. Rose/Kanaya.
1. Chapter 1

Oh Jesus, okay, this is a repost of something I've had up on Archive of Our Own for awhile now; if you want the full effects with color-coded text etc. I'd suggest you read it there under the username "partingxshot."

Written for a prompt dealing with Rose in denial about her sexuality. Needless to say, it sort of spiraled out of control. I began writing this during her fight with Jack, and it becomes very obviously AU from that point out.

If you are not the type who will judge me for posting a song rec, try the Bassnectar remix of "Lights" by Ellie Goulding. If you think that's tacky, you didn't see anything.

Only possible warnings are for language, gratuitous obtuseness, and some awkward teenage pre-sexuality.

* * *

><p>In the end, everything is deep purple.<p>

It creeps from the corners of her vision, coils like thick smoke in her throat, heavy enough to make her want to vomit as if her body considered such actions anymore. But everything has been streamlined and schooled into perfection, simple gears working a dark machine.

She is fueled by what might once have been rage, but now is more akin to Being.

She screams and screams until the noise finally claws itself to the surface, overriding her vocal cords until she howls like the world is ending _too late for that Seer _and her friend is dying _in the past Seer _and Jack stands before her like Cerberus gone apocalyptic _rip him kill him make him suffer devour his heart gorge upon his feral brain_

Magic explodes from the tips of her wands, deep purple lightning versus electric green infinity. Colors so lurid she can no longer see around the afterimage. She does not know how long they have been fighting.

She is so angry and she can barely remember why.

He teleports, and she feels lines of hot pain sinking into her back. She pushes herself into the sky to escape someone else's fate _feast on his organs rip out his eyes,_ but the claws tear far under her skin, scraping down her shoulder bone and burrowing into her hip. She feels these things abstractly, as though watching Jack mangling her body from beyond the Furthest Ring.

The Seer feels the eyes of countless gods.

Her bones lurch and grind as he pulls her back to the surface; her head cracks against the hard checkered floor. Her blood tingles and hisses, burning into her like acid, and she_ roars_, scrambles to a dizzy lunge, but suddenly he is behind her again and pushing her to the ground.

Crushing pain spikes through her calf and she screams, staring sharp rage into the sword that pierces her through, pinning her useless human flesh to the floor.

She raises a wand, and faster than thought he knocks it clattering out of her hand.

_crush his skull sink your teeth into his lungs_

They have both evolved since the game's inception. He is as mindless and mechanical now as They have made her, but he is better at it.

Animal claws press tight, send fizzling blood dribbling down her neck. He does not speak. He doesn't have to.

As she feels dark purple fuzzing the edges of her vision, something _shifts_. The breath is sucked straight out the atmosphere; something theoretical pulls taut. A split-second of assault on the walls of reality until the dam is breached and time runs forward again.

The Seer is thrown backwards in an explosion of speeding spacetime, as dimensions twist just so and someone halfway familiar is standing in front of her sprawled legs, sword hefted on his shoulder. The bright red of his suit cuts straight through smog and shining magical fallout. His words reach her ears like she is listening to a faulty radio underwater.

"Christ Lalonde…almost...it all up..."

The Seer whips her head frantically, searching for her enemy – she finds a girl in matching red, hovering in midair with gently beating wings. Jack is still, claws frozen in a gesture of strangulation. He stands behind grand turning symbols, amputated from time. "Hurry I…hold him…"

No.

The boy tries to help her up - "I know you're…explain later…" - but is instantly shocked back by the power crackling down her skin. As he stumbles to regain balance, shadows push her to her feet, supporting her injured leg.

No, this is wrong. They do not belong here. The girl doesn't even belong in this universe and she is _in the way._

She issues a guttural warning in the broodfester tongues, then charges forward.

The girl looks at her with wide eyes, then shouts one frantic word – _"Jade!" _– and someone pops into existence behind the Seer's back with a crack and a flash of green light. Arms wrap under her own and she screams, drags her attacker forward with the rage of the dead and the dying and feels her own body folding in on itself. She reaches for the red luminescent table of runes that blocks her from her enemy, stretches her fingers to dispel its power –

And with the sucking force of a supermassive black hole and a tiny _pop_, everything changes. She is standing on LOLAR, surrounded by gentle light and color.

For one moment she stands suspended, arm stretched towards nothing. Then she falls to the ground, gasping for breath. It feels like her body has been forced through a small, flat tube and then reinflated, and she coughs out curses on the intruders, on this world, on the medium, on anything and anyone that can be crushed.

"It's...be okay," a soft, scared voice says behind her.

It doesn't take much thought to let the shadows propel her, swivel her around and throw her at this disgusting girl who _dares_ take her from her prey, who jerks her through worlds at her whim without her wands and she _almost had him he was finally going to pay_

"Kanaya she's...to anything...god…!"

She barely sees the terrified face beneath her as her dark fingers close around that pathetic, delicate neck. She shouts mashed gibberish that even the gods wouldn't find sensible, shakes her, digs her nails into the skin. The girl cries out, but she can no longer hear anything beyond the frenzied, impossible pulse of her own heart overriding the desperate fluttering of her attacker's.

In a frantic burst of motion, the girl reaches out, clamping her lunchbox headphones over the Seer's ears.

"—a ridiculous course of action, you know."

Something buzzes in the back of her brain, sharp and annoying like stepping on a splinter.

"You are overemotional and reacting in a manner you will regret later."

The Seer snarls, but the voice pushes on over her objection. "I understand that you are in pain, and angry, but this is not the target of your rage. You are not in your right mind, and quite frankly, this behavior is beneath you."

She tilts back her head and roars an Eldritch warning, the Tongues echoing like thunder against pale clouds. She realizes that it's raining, colorful strains of water dripping down her hair.

"Yes, that is very impressive. But I find you much more impressive when you are acting as more than a mindless snorting sock puppet." The tone is no harsher than she remembers it, but worlds firmer.

The Seer looks down and finds that she has released the girl, who looks up at her with cautious concern. She is bewildered to find that she can now recognize the nuances of facial expression.

"You may, of course, choose to continue your path of decimation momentarily, though I believe that you will find this less necessary if you take the time to listen. But in the meantime, you should try playing the rain."

The splinter turns to a knife. The Seer tries to clutch her head around the bulky headphones. _Hunt him hurt him eat his heart-_

"Stand up, please."

Without conscious control of her actions, she obeys. The other girl scrambles to her feet.

_"What do you want?"_ she asks the meddling voice in the Tongues, cautiously lowering her hands. Then her mouth adds, _"I will give you what you want, if you ask it."_

"Rose, I don't have any idea what you are saying, and if you will permit me to be honest here you sound ridiculous."

The Seer scowls and shifts her gaze to the clouds. There is something that she was meant to do here, something important that someone said a long time ago. Left scratching at a tiny broken cat flap in the back of her consciousness, begging to be let in.

Jaspers wants her to play the rain.

The voice keeps talking, but the words sink into a buzz, pulsing softly against the dark corners and high walls of her mind. The Seer raises her hands to the sky. Liquid sunlight washes down her skin, pattering onto her cheekbones and running down her shirt. She breathes in, senses the intricacies like slender webbing, yarns of color and power twisting into and between each drop. Intense, unique, like notes in a song. She twists them together, knits them into melody. She sees faces of those she knows and those she has forgotten.

It takes time.

She does not know how long she stands, forgetting and remembering. Mourning. She stands until her arms ache and her eyes prickle with unfamiliar fire. She stands until the shadows retreat from her leg, leaving her lopsided with pain and quickly crusted scabs. She stands until she can no longer hear the voices of the Horrorterrors under the crashing sound of her own guilt and grief.

Something washes out of her, leaving her empty and hollow but almost clean.

Kanaya's voice is warm in her ears.

Rose breathes deeply and writes a song.

x

The transition is painful. She lies on the parlor sofa, huddled under the undamaged blankets Jade found in the front hall closet. She tries not to think of early childhood, when she would catch a cold and sit by the fire and her mother would wrap her up like a cocoon with exaggerated tenderness. She shivers, and sweats, and flashes between heat and chill like she has some sort of satanic fever. Sometimes it feels like something is crawling around inside of her, scratching at her stomach and the inside of her vocal cords like thousands of tiny spiders until without warning she turns and heaves into the trash can by her head. What comes out is dark and sticky like tar. It leaks from under her eyelids, messily gluing her eyes shut until the flow has ceased.

It is not a pleasant process, purifying the flesh.

Her skin is still grey, just paler and sicklier looking than before. When she had first let the Throes overtake her, she had felt a tiny, incessant itching in her hands – the whorls of her fingerprints changing. A small and redundant claim, in her opinion, but the Horrorterrors had made it clear: her own identity was lost the second she came into their service. Now they blur the line between itching and burning, moving as if faced with resistance. It doesn't make any logical sense, of course, but her old prints are trying to reassert themselves. The game is fond of tedious symbolism.

When Jade isn't changing Rose's trash can, fighting off imps, or using her new skills to teleport all over the Medium, she spends a lot of time alchemizing things. This seems to be the fallback when there is nothing else to do, but even moreso now it seems like an excuse to be in a different room as much as possible. Rose does not resent her for this, but she wishes she could find a way to adequately voice her apology. She has never been good at being genuine. She doesn't even know if she can speak English; she hasn't tried. Her throat feels dusty, like heavy tomes of forgotten lore hidden in some monstrous library. This is no hyperbolic flourish. She knows their weight.

Instead of speaking, she types on one of Jade's many computers, messaging Dave and various trolls but mostly Kanaya.

GA: It Cant Be Helped

GA: Circumstances Have Changed And Our Respective Groups Need To Cooperate In A More Intimate Manner Than Previously Achieved

TT: While I understand my own relative uselessness in this state, I'm becoming increasingly wary of time constraints.

GA: I Know

GA: And They Are Being Taken Into Account By The Time Players

GA: Your Only Goal Should Be Recovery Until We Can All Meet

TT: As much as I appreciate your concern, I don't need to be babied. This has to happen soon.

GA: Rose He Will Still Be There

TT: How do you know?

TT: Never mind, that's a frivolous question. Aradia was right; it makes logical sense. Still, it doesn't feel prudent to wait.

GA: We Wont Wait Long

GA: Just Until You Can Be Moved Safely

GA: And Then We Will Bring Him Back

TT: Okay.

GA: You Should Not Feel Too Badly

GA: I Mean Yes This Is Partly Your Fault

GA: But Given The Circumstances Your Actions Were Not At All Unwarranted

GA: Just Unwise

GA: Are You Still There

TT: There's something that's changed about you, Kanaya Maryam.

GA: Well Yes I Am Now A Day Stalker Who Sustains Herself On The Blood Of Innocents

GA: Also I Glow In The Dark

TT: Touché.

Skaia doesn't ever set on this world. Time passes by in a tipsy haze of sunlight and rainbows. Rose talks to Kanaya until she can no longer keep her eyes open, and then some, because when she can immerse her friend in such meaningless discussion she does not have to think about the little monstrosities creeping through her grey matter, prodding and whispering and reminding her that she is not free yet.

Even still, sleep comes difficult when she knows that she'll find herself on Derse, in close range of the Outer Ring. Just sitting in her tower she imagines tendrils wrapped around her mind so thickly she can barely see straight. She is afraid that she will wake up dark again, identity and conscience eaten away.

Sometimes when she opens her eyes again she finds Jade's headphones on her ears, and the impression she has not been facing the Horrorterrors alone.

x

TT: After discovering the MEOW code imbedded in my own subconscious, I retroactively took everything Jaspers had said about playing the rain as a metaphor for this goal.

TT: It made sense; he spoke of patterns and the roots of life.

TT: Now I am under the impression that it contained a double meaning, the second much more literal.

TT: The rain in my land seems to contain some form of "reset" code. Not to the extent of the Scratch. Instead, this would only pertain to the personal data of each player.

TT: But since I was working with the gods to subvert the game entirely through the corruption of my personal data, the rain doesn't seem entirely effective on my malady.

TT: Which is just as well. It's possible that a complete reset would have destroyed all progress I had made up the echeladder.

GA: So Youre Saying That The Rain Was Only Partly Effective

GA: This Is Something That Will Remain A Problem

TT: Yes.

GA: That Is Unfortunate

GA: But I Suppose We Should Be Thankful Anyway Since We Didnt Even Know If It Would Do Anything

TT: Whose idea was it?

GA: Jade

"Um…I wanted to try some fruitcake. I made eggnog, too."

Rose pushes herself up on her elbows. Jade is holding what looks like a brick, or maybe a turd ripped straight out of SBaHJ. The alchemiter probably shouldn't be used to make things meant for consumption, especially not in conjunction with a drawing pad. Jade is smiling, maybe a bit cautiously but with genuine feeling behind it, and Rose feels another wave of hot guilt mixed with gratitude anyway.

"Thank you," she says, slowly and clearly. She is unshowered and sick and smells like bile and dark magic, and there aren't many ways she could be more embarrassed.

Jade looks startled to hear her voice for a moment. Then she smiles. "It's not Christmas, but we can do a toast."

x

Rose is a being of forethought. She likes to plan, to iron out all possible wrongs so that she may inhabit the best of all possible worlds. Before her grimdark descent, she would never have guessed that she could be anything besides careful. But even then Rose knew that not everything could be predicted. For instance, in the midst of the chaos of the end of the world, she never thought she would form new relationships.

Granted, some are perfunctory. They need the trolls and the knowledge they grudgingly provide. But there is an exception to this general rule, and she took Rose by surprise when they first began to talk – really talk.

GA: It Still Needs Some Color In My Opinion

TT: As much as I appreciate the effort, we've probably wasted enough time as it is.

GA: Sorry

GA: I Just Thought That Maybe This Would Be A Good Chance To Talk And Perform Various Cultural Exchanges

TT: As it seems to have been.

TT: I must admit, I'm a bit surprised by how much conversational ground we've covered.

GA: Yes We Have Covered This Conversation With A Very Far Reaching Blanket Of Topics Indeed

GA: Made Great Strides In The Name Of Intercultural Unity And Understanding

GA: And Even Provided You With A Few New Outfits

TT: Yes, well done. After we finish standing around congratulating ourselves we might even get some work done here.

GA: The Color Though

TT: I gravitate towards the darkly mundane. It's my natural state of existence.

GA: I Am Well Aware And That Is A Part Of Your Own Personal Style

GA: But If You Would Permit Me To Say I Think This Outfit Could Benefit From Another Splash Of Color

GA: I Know

GA: Tie That Scarf You Found In The Lab Around Your Waist

TT: Fine, I'll humor you.

TT: Like this?

GA: Yes Exactly

GA: That Should Suit Your Sense Of Dramatics I Think

GA: You Look Perfect

TT: Is that so.

GA: Rose Only You Could Pull Off The Subtly Macabre This Well

Rose smirks in satisfaction, surprising even herself. She turns slow circles in the ruins of her room, allowing Kanaya to see every angle from wherever her vantage point happens to be. Playing dress-up with an alien from another universe has been surprisingly entertaining. It had started as an attempt to encourage Kanaya in their possibly crucial conversations (TT: Do trolls have names?), but eventually devolved into some sort of mutual enjoyment, though Rose is loathe to admit it when there are much more pressing matters that she should be focusing on.

She is having fun for what feels like the first time in a long time, and she doesn't want to cut their conversation short just yet.

TT: Flattery.

GA: Perhaps

TT: Or have you learned the art of sarcasm more thoroughly than I had presumed?

GA: Well I Suppose That Will Be Your Responsibility To Gauge

GA: I Am Not Tipping My Hand This Time

TT: Well, then I will just have to assume that passive-aggressive one-upmanship is at play here.

GA: Not Necessarily Its Possible That I Genuinely Think You Look Perfect

Rose pauses, lifting her fingers from the keys. She breathes.

TT: Now you're laying it on a bit too thick. It's getting harder to confuse with your true opinion.

GA: Not Really

TT: Well then.

TT: If you are actually being genuine, I will give you the momentary courtesy of returning the favor.

TT: Thank you.

TT: Now we really do need to keep moving.

**- tentacleTherapist **[TT] **ceased pestering grimAuxiliatrix **[GA] **-**

GA: Um

GA: Well Goodbye I Guess

Societal norms in regards to close friendship have changed drastically from one century to the next. In the eighteenth century it would have been not at all out of place for one heterosexual man to tell another that he loved him, or even wax poetic about him as the greatest joy in his life. Though a case could be made for latent homosexual tendencies in some of the private letters exemplifying the latter, one must overcome the temptation to superimpose one's own belief systems and ideas of normalcy. Cultural relativism is key, and it is entirely possible for a close relationship of this nature to develop between modern day heterosexual men or women. There is a greater chance of this relationship being misunderstood as something more corporeal in the modern era, given the wider recognition and acceptance of homosexuality. Yet these relationships still exist, pure meetings of the mind, deep bonds that develop sans physical attraction in the spirit of their ancestors. Rose thinks this is very possible, and perfectly normal.

She takes long, thoughtful trips between mysterious islands and archaic stones.

x

Revelations later, she lays stretched on a couch and focuses on not puking. If she can make it a few more hours without any dramatic displays of illness, they will let her move around and the plan will proceed.

GA: I Really Look Forward To Finally Meeting You In Person

TT: And I you.

TT: I know that I'm not the most demonstrative friend, but rest assured that I understand.

TT: I mean, I know what all you've done and

TT: Hmm. This is harder than I had hoped.

GA: Its Alright Im Very Familiar With Emotional Constipation In My Friend

TT: Thank you.

TT: For that unfortunate image, and for everything else.

GA: To The Extent That I Have Actually Influenced The Current Course Of Events

GA: Which Is Actually Almost Negligible

GA: And Could Have Been Done Much More Effectively Besides

GA: But May Still Be Considered Of Some Value Depending On Your Personal View Of The Philosophy Of This Game

TT: Kanaya. I'm being genuine here and it's taking an effort.

GA: Right Sorry

GA: Youre Welcome Is What I Mean To Say

TT: Good. We both know you're not quite that humble. Not lately, at least.

GA: Touché

Rose lies down to sleep with the lunchbox headphones back on her ears. Kanaya reads her part of a troll romance novel. The characters seem bland to Rose, and the metaphors are much too blatant, and it could do with more thorough descriptive embellishment all around. But Kanaya reads in a careful, clear voice, barely stumbling, and it is clear that she loves this story. Rose listens until descriptions of darkly shining rainbow drinkers mingle in that half-asleep dreaming state she can still experience before she slides into her Derse body.

Rose falls asleep to Kanaya's gentle narration of heroic passions and torn lovers. The voice lingers about her tower to chase demons away.

x

There is a gently sloping cliff protruding off one side of Rose's island. It's covered in the same substance that coats most of the ground here: white, like snow, and cool, but not as wet or as chilly as it should be.

It's here that Dave and Aradia meet them. He stands slightly slouched, hands shoved into his pockets. He seems to better act the part when he's wearing his suits. Aradia stands facing the oil-glistening sea. Her wings beat slowly and uselessly, as if by their own accord, punctuated with occasional moth-delicate flutters.

Rose does her best not to lean too hard on Jade's shoulder as she is helped, over-cautiously, up the slope. Dave eyes her carefully, or so she assumes – his head doesn't move for some time. Finally Aradia notices their presence and turns. She smiles nervously in greeting, and her eyes linger too long on Rose's mottled gray hands.

"Are we all ready?" She looks the essence of command, tweaking her smile into fixed confidence.

"Yes," Rose says, definitively. She meets their gazes coolly.

"Right." Aradia doesn't miss a beat. "We're getting back the same way I got here. I'm assuming we're all familiar by now with how the Furthest Ring works? I mean, to the best that it can be familiarized?" She looks to Jade specifically, not out of doubt, but necessity. As the accompanying space player, she is a crucial element in getting them all out safely instead of somehow finding themselves in a Horrorterror's metaphysical belly. Space and time are no longer constant in such a place. She and the time players must tread carefully.

"Yep!" she says, maybe a bit too cheerfully. She squeezes Rose's shoulder.

"Right, okay. So we go to Derse, then make our way along the Furthest Ring. Make sure to aim for the bubbles Feferi's set up as much as possible, okay? She's doing everything she can from where she's at."

"Where are my wands?" Rose asks, and her voice is barely hoarse this time.

There is a slight pause. Aradia and Jade exchange glances, and that's all the explanation Rose needs.

"When we get to the other side," Aradia says finally. Rose doesn't bother with a response. It hurts her vocal cords, and it won't do any good. They do not trust her so close to the Horrorterrors with weaponry in hand.

Dave shifts his weight to the balls of his feet. "So if we're finished saying our last, tearful goodbyes to this bad trip of a birthday party, can we get on with the promenade? It's downright unmannerly to proceed without getting guest of honor back." His flat voice twitches southern by the end, and Rose makes a mental note to analyze his vocal tics for emotional tip-offs.

Aradia smiles ruefully. "Well, we'll figure that all out once we get to base. That and our idea about the dreamselves and the Scratch. One step at a time."

Rose is personally in favor of immediately scouring the entire Ring for signs of John, pulverizing anything that tries to stop her, dragging him back down to Skaia by his ridiculous sock hood, then indulging in generally embarrassing displays of relieved affection. She wouldn't be surprised if this were a common sentiment among members of their current party. But Aradia has a point.

"Once we get in, contact with the other side will probably be sketchy at best." She experimentally stretches her wings to their full extent. They shimmer like gossamer, and if Rose looks closely she thinks she can see tiny, moving strands of color swallowed by the red. Soap bubble beauty. She really is a lovely young woman, all luscious dark curls and curious confidence. "Kanaya will try to keep an eye out with her vision abilities, but there's probably not a whole lot she'll be able to do. Karkat will stand around acting angry and being worried."

Jade laughs, then they go silent for a moment, waiting for someone to make the first move. It's electric, this last few seconds before they abandon their own Session in favor of a deader one.

Rose feels Dave's eyes on her. "What about it, ladies? We're saying adios to this border like the BP's got the dogs out. You ready to run, Esperanza?" His metaphors sound bizarre delivered so tonelessly, but nevertheless Jade giggles somewhat breathlessly.

"_So_ ready."

He smirks, just the slightest bit. "Then say hasta luego, bitches."

They take off.

x

In retrospect, this would be a more honorable way to die than possessed by a writhing legion of dark gods. At least in the eyes of the majority of humanity – pardon, sentient life. And as this majority is something with which Rose comes into contact on an everyday basis, its collective opinion on the subject of life and death actually does matter.

But what is honor anyway, if not an abstract concept with no real meaning? She muses over these things, with sluggish mind and tired body, as she is dragged through endless gloom, skimming over what look to be pits of grasping tentacles but may or may not be their own minds, through tunnels of intestine, in and out of dream bubbles that represent shadowed, wet creations of a horrorterror's daughter. They move in a way that is either gliding, flying, or falling, in an endless expanse with no horizon or landmarks, turning simple circles in the psychophysical dark.

It is a ceaseless black parade of horror that makes Jade's hand tremble in Rose's own, but Rose is numb to all of this by now. She keeps the rasping, stabbing whispers in the cracks of her mind to a minimum by thinking logically about unrelated subjects.

Honor is a concept that was invented to give sacrifices meaning. It is much easier to rally a kingdom to conquering glory if they believe that there is a reason for their death. In the end they die anyway, and their towers fall, and a new hoard rushes in to slaughter and smash and destroy everything that they have built, and this is not helping keep her from thoughts of despair.

In the game, however, honor is given much more tangible meaning. As a God Tier being, John cannot be killed without honor. Not truly.

A stab in the back is not honor.

They stumble into gravity, falling on sharp rocks on an island in the middle of a stormy ocean. This place may be based on a dream or memory, but the lighting crackles like reality incarnate.

The others are gasping for breath. As the spacetime players they travel with arms linked, Aradia in the middle, and when they enter a bubble they do not let go. Rose feels useless and dragged, her tenuous connection to reality contained in Jade's cold, sweat-slicked hand.

Jade, bent double with exertion and probably fear, looks up to give her a weak smile.

"You could help us, you know. If you accepted Them again."

Rose's breath comes up short. Jade's smile widens as the imaginary wind whips her hair to frenzy. "They will bequeath unto you the power to save, conquer, or kill at your leisure."

"Stop that," Rose says.

"Stop what?" Jade blinks, and the dark miasma that crept around her ankles was never there.

"We need to keep moving," Aradia gasps. Dave only nods, skin even paler than usual. They take one step after another, moving only small visible distances over the rock, but covering leaps and bounds of murky Ring-space. If it weren't for Feferi's afterlife intervention, they would probably be dead.

"Happily so," Dave adds. "Each soul's grandest wish is to become one with the great and terrible gods. Why struggle?"

At this point Rose decides that it would be best to stop listening to her friends for awhile.

They submerge themselves in blackness again. Rose has lost count of the number of times they have repeated this cycle. The Ring feels endless, and isn't that its nature? Perhaps they are moving incorrectly after all, simply following the path laid out for them around and around and around again. Perhaps thousands of years have passed in the Medium, and they cannot feel it.

This creeping claustrophobia of time, out of all the horrors that surround them, is what causes panic to clog her throat.

Stop, she tells herself. Think logically and it can't reach you.

They will make it through. They will find the parallel Veil, and they will meet the others. They will meet Kanaya, who has probably realized by now that it is impossible, even for her, to watch their progress. Who is probably working herself into all-consuming worry. Kanaya who is waiting for her.

"You can't make it."

Kanaya crosses her arms over her chest. She is an elegant creature, from the single blurred screenshot Rose has seen. High, proud cheekbones and eyes flashing dangerously under dark liner.

Rose musters up some mock-agony. "Oh, please, don't throw me into the briar patch!"

"You think it's my intention to spur you on through saying snarky opposite-things. You are mistaken." She tilts her head, and there is hardness in her eyes. "You can't make it. Not without Their help."

"That may be so," Rose says, and she smiles like the devil himself has caught hold of her skirt. "But I'd rather sink into oblivion than back into Their arms."

"Is that the case?" Kanaya says, lifting one dainty eyebrow. "You are doing yourself a disservice. Your mortal companions will die."

"Won't we all?" She laughs then, and she is startled by the high, chilled pitch of her own voice.

Warm arms wrap around her shoulders. Sharp body heat and a suppressed chuckle press against her as delicate fingers trail down her back. "Come and rest, then, darling Rose." The cold disapproval of the voice has mellowed and warmed until boiling, but the eyes are lifeless chunks of obsidian. She feels lips against the hollow of her throat.

Something inside of her spirals away, and the space behind her eyes goes white.

Someone a long ways off is calling her name.

A flash of orange light. She feels a thousand voices screaming in her head as the heat melts away, leaving her alone. She _floats falls lives dies _until she is surrounded by the black of the Ring again as Their startled feelers writhe in the distance, stung. She finds herself gasping for breath that doesn't exist.

A creature floats in front of her. A ghost or a genie, with outstretched wings and killer shades.

They stare at one another for a moment. Then Rose swallows and nods her thanks.

"Say hi to Harley for me," Davesprite says, and takes off in another flash. Sometimes the dead do not know their place.

She feels, fuzzing into existence, a hand in hers.

"-to fucking wake up already, or I will fucking-"

"Go!" she croaks out, just as she feels a backhanded slap across her face. Judging from her stinging cheeks, it hasn't been the first. Jade's expression would be comical, if Rose were the kind of idiot who found this situation funny.

"Rose! Rose, we're almost there, it wouldn't let us leave with you flopping around muttering spooky gibberish, but you're okay, right? You're-" She startles, looking around wildly. They are surrounded by a steadily growing rushing sound, louder and faster and they're falling through –

The world goes unconscious, but they wake up.

The last thing Rose feels before passing out: warm arms gripping her flailing limbs tight, soft hair mussed against her cheek as the word _safe_ reverberates into the crook of her neck.


	2. Chapter 2

Rose wakes up to the smell of burning.

She lies on what feels like a thin blanket spread over hard tiled floor. Her lashes flutter with the effort it would require to open her eyes, and she almost considers sinking back into exhausted sleep until she realizes the potential urgency of the smoky smell.

Awareness of the recent past explodes under her eyelids.

She snaps to consciousness. Above her is a bright, florescent light, reminiscent of bulk grocery stores and military prisons. She tilts her head to look for the source of the threat, finding only grey walls and dark corners where the light will not reach. She pushes herself to her elbows, preparing to stand (her leg is throbbing, goddammit, the pain isn't receding after all), and comes face-to-face with someone she almost knows.

"It's alright," Kanaya says. "Jade says she's preparing…Earth breakfast."

She is radiant. Literally radiant.

Rose, for one bizarre, disorienting moment, does not know what to say. Kanaya's skin is smooth and snow-pale, the serene glow only punctuated by the blackness of her gently pursed lips. Her eyes are bright and sharp, stronger than one shitty screenshot could convey. They sparkle just like a terrible Harlequin romance. A woman who can tighten throats, in more ways than one. Fangs disclose themselves demurely in a poised little smile that shines with the strength of a much stronger display. Her clenched hands rest on skirted knees.

Rose pushes herself to sitting, searching for some witty, potentially cutting remark, but it doesn't come, and that in itself is the strangest thing she has ever encountered, dark gods aside.

"Hello," she says instead.

Kanaya's hands relax, revealing fingers every bit as graceful as the delusion in the Ring.

"Hello."

They stare at one another for a moment, reveling in the sheer effort it took for them to meet face-to-face.

It's just that she was unprepared for her friend to be so physically striking. This is a normal reaction; it's not every day that your alien correspondent turns out to bear all the marble grace of Praxiteles' Hermes. It is normal to admire such beauty, to want to catch the gaze of exotic eyes that dig so deeply.

"I wasn't sure about the lighting," Kanaya says anxiously. "I am aware that humans are diurnal, but I am uninformed as to its benefits in recovery. I tried asking Strider how to make you most comfortable, but he gave me an answer that involved maiden sacrifices and I have grown enough accustomed to your human sarcasm that–"

Ah, there it is. Familiarity.

"So the rambling wasn't solely an online trait." She isn't sure if she is smiling or smirking, but Kanaya seems to appreciate the effort. "Oh, good."

She prays that Kanaya doesn't ask if that was sarcasm. Rose honestly doesn't know.

They go to "breakfast," Rose leaning on Kanaya's shoulder. She makes two mental notes, one that involves procuring a change in bandages, and the other a rather involuntary observation of Kanaya's relatively normal body heat.

No, not "normal." She has to retool her thought processes to avoid speciescentrism now. Human.

Not normal.

Jade presents them with what looks like it might once have been bacon, and Rose can't help but wonder where the girl raised by a dog got the bright idea to try cooking for their new Alternian allies right off the bat. Between this and her attempts to alchemize all the food Rose needed back on LOLAR, she seems to regard providing group nourishment as a new hobby – or duty.

Perhaps this is not the best use of her talents, Rose decides as she prods what could be either toast or an egg. No matter how hard she is trying to help. But Jade is thirteen and a little bit lost, just like the rest of them. They can give her this.

Karkat sits at the far end of the table, complaining loudly about Earth slop. Aradia is doing her best to seem curious about the food. Vriska, given a wide berth by the others, is subtly flinging bits at Terezi, who is trying to ignore her in favor of getting Dave to let her lick his eyebrow. Sollux and Gamzee are elsewhere. The rest are dead.

"It's been odd," Kanaya says, politely fiddling with her food but eating none of it. "I think the majority of us have gone a bit stir-crazy."

"I was under the impression that these were the normal proceedings of troll society," Rose says, risking a sip of orange juice.

"Well yes, but…" Kanaya looks like she's having trouble voicing what exactly is wrong here, on their tiny piece of rock in a numbed universe. "The rules should be different now. We can't afford to live as we have been taught."

"You could make that into a metaphor if you really thought it was a good idea." Rose swallows another mouthful of juice, barely wincing as it goes down. It's a matter of getting accustomed to the flavor, really.

"It would be in bad taste," Kanaya says.

Rose can't help but agree.

x

There is a plan to save John.

Everyone is by now convinced that he is not truly dead, as his death was not heroic. Rose could argue this point, but she would, for once, hate to be right. Besides, he had probably failed to fulfill to the letter the conditions of a "heroic" death laid in-universe by the game. So instead, she promotes the obviously correct idea that he is somewhere in the Furthest Ring, waiting for resurrection. She knows enough of the gods to realize that "resurrection" does not necessarily mean "life" and that they will need to pry him from the grip of the Ring themselves if they want to see him again. The gods recognize his importance and are drawn to his power. She has informed the others of this as well as, more recently, her run-in with Davesprite, believing that he still may be of some use if he refuses to lie down and dream quietly.

There is also a plan to sacrifice Dave and Rose's dreamselves to activate the Scratch in their own session. That one was all Rose, and is an entirely different story.

Her skin seems to be growing paler, but this might just be her imagination. She would call it "wishful thinking," except that she doesn't.

An end to the feeling of being watched would be nice, and the disturbing whispers in her dream tower that she can't avoid. Perhaps if she at least looked like the others, the trolls would stop treating her with caution ranging from the subtle to the outright malicious. Vriska particularly seems to enjoy calling her names, some of which she has apparently haphazardly researched from Earth and would be considered offensive to humans of African descent. Not that she probably realizes any of this; her insults are pasted together hastily and stretched out with all the impudence of a child. Kanaya tells Rose that Vriska is acting out because she is worried for John, and she mostly believes her, though it is clear that there are other issues at fault here.

Vriska is a Hero of Light, and in some ways must know more than her companions. Sometimes she seems the part, when she meets Rose's eyes with daring, her smile stretched into a wide display of shining teeth. She may be loud and bossy, but she knows things that the others do not, and sometimes Rose can read it in the curve of her dark lashes, the swagger of her walk through the half-darkness of the trolls' base.

It is these moments, jagged bites of clarity between overloud taunts, that cause Rose to smirk back.

Kanaya has been a great help. They often find themselves in her respiteblock, talking about vague, stunningly unimportant aspects of their respective worlds' philosophies, or prattling almost normally about clothes or books.

Rose finds that she likes these moments best of all, when they are locked up safe from devastation behind thin walls. She likes talking to Kanaya, or peacefully burying herself in a book nearby while she works on an outfit. Sometimes they read together.

Rose will freely admit that she used to look down on Kanaya. She did not seem interesting, at the start, or a good conversationalist, with very little ability to needle or manipulate. Then came grudging respect, then grateful. Friendship, even admiration. Equal footing at last.

So it is perfectly logical that she feels so incredibly, effervescently _warm_ here.

Yea, truly, their friendship has the power to bend the will of gods.

Kanaya, without warning, flings a scarf around Rose's neck to take measurements. She ties it lovingly, fingers brushing against her neck, and smiles.

Rose has to take a deep breath and read Nietzsche for ten minutes before she feels normal again.

x

Karkat is the one who tells her that she can't come on the rescue mission.

"Because no offense, Lalonde, but your 'I am a truly psychotic speaker of death and despair' antics have been less than inspiring." He leans against Kanaya's doorframe, scowling more deeply than usual. Or perhaps he's wincing; Kanaya's room is more brightly lit than the others, especially while Rose is trying to read.

"I assure you that I am in perfect control of my faculties," Rose informs him. She is carefully dismissive as she returns to the copy of _The Birth of Tragedy_ perched on her crossed legs. "If anything, I understand the Ring better than the rest of you."

Kanaya doesn't speak, but out of the corner of her eye Rose notices the way she shifts uncomfortably on the floor, trying to face the two of them equally.

"I shouldn't have to explain this," he says, and when Rose finally glances up she notices how determinedly his angry stare is fixed at a blank point in the wall somewhere to her left. "It's not about knowledge. It's about not getting the rest of our team killed, and you haven't exactly been a paragon of crusading white light against the writhing depths that you're so eager to face off with." His glance wavers to Kanaya for support, but none seems to be forthcoming.

"'Our,' you say," Rose snipes back with careful aim. "I wonder if this is the royal we, a reference to solely the trolls, or an actual effort to be inclusive on your part." She watches his face twist up further, angry teeth bared, and ticks a point in her favor.

"I'm not the one sitting on my ass in a corner all day, whispering about some stupid suicide plan that's never going to work! Fuck you, I'm actually trying to get your egg-brain leader back, and what do you do? Everything you can to make it more difficult, that's what you do." He shoves himself off the frame and takes a few steps back into the hall. "Fuck you. You're not going, and that's your own damn fault."

The sigh Kanaya gives once he is gone sounds truly exhausted. Her eyes close, head tilting up. "I should talk to him soon," she informs the ceiling. Rose does feel a little bit bad about that.

She has always studied body language; it's second nature by now. Usually understanding doesn't come so quickly, but it reads plainly in the distinct crunch of Kanaya's thin eyebrows, the depth her fangs press into her bottom lip. She interprets her friend's face with a new sort of zeal, and try as she might she can't ignore the message beside her.

"You don't want me to go," she says.

Kanaya meets her eyes somewhat sheepishly. "I'd rather not risk it."

And it hurts, for reasons that Rose, for all her extensive vocabulary, cannot put into words.

(She is beginning to hate the feeling that maybe years of childhood spent in seclusion with big books have gone to waste.)

"It is genuinely frustrating," she says, trying her best not to fling Nietzsche to the floor, "when what's left of two universes unanimously decides that you are untrustworthy." She feels old rage bubbling up, emotions and images that are not entirely hers, and clamps a lid down on them. Hard.

"That wasn't exactly what I meant," Kanaya says. Rose is about to ask her _what_, then, could she possibly mean by informing her that she is too much of a wildcard to be of use to them anymore, when long fingers brush against her cheek.

Rose starts, then lets the slight pressure guide her.

Kanaya moves her face until their noses are closer than an American-adjusted personal bubble should allow.

"I don't want to risk you getting hurt," she says, plain and open and oh god, it's true.

Rose stammers out something that sounds like "that wouldn't happen" but feels more like "Dear Lord, did you know that the color of your eyes isn't quite amber after all, but a much more interesting intersection of gold sheen and honey, and I believe there is now something wrong with my autonomic nervous system."

"I know you can take care of yourself," Kanaya says, but the sound is distant, like Rose is again submerged. "But it wouldn't stop me from worrying. Perhaps it's selfish."

For a fraction of a second, Kanaya might have leaned in. Rose might have imagined it. She doesn't know, because it takes just one fraction of a second longer before Rose launches to her feet, stumbling backwards. One more fraction, and the burning embarrassment sets in, coloring her face and filling her mouth with impressive but incoherent babbling.

Kanaya looks startled, hand still hovering where it had rested so cleanly on Rose's face.

Rose blathers nonsense about the plan, about understanding why she can't go because honestly she's not a space-time player anyway and she'll respect the group's wishes. She ends with a whopping "I should leave," and knows it really can't get any worse from there.

Kanaya's face is a horrifying progression from confusion to comprehension to humiliation.

She closes her eyes for a moment (Rose's heart is pounding), scrunches them together and when they open again the fleeting pain is gone, replaced with a graceful sculpture of a face devoid of emotion. "I understand. I'm sorry."

Kanaya has faced rejection before, Rose knows. Maybe not like this. But that one, sharp moment before she sinks back to marble twists something inside of her (where the Horrorterrors used to writhe but now feels more cavernous and empty every second) and _pulls._

She shakes her head. "No, it's my fault. I shouldn't have…" Shouldn't have what, exactly? Enjoyed Kanaya's company? Kept her rattling around in her brain, a prisoner since before the grimdark set in? Traced the lines of her neck, fascinated, her eyes following the cut of her shirt against –

Kanaya is still watching, guarded. Those slim fingers clutch tightly together (they have been doused in Rose's skin, and vice versa).

"I'll see you at dinner," Rose says, and walks away.

x

Head down and face burning in the near-darkness of the hallway, she doesn't notice Vriska until she almost runs into her chest.

"Excuse me," she says reflexively, taking a step back. Her limp is reduced by now to the barest hesitation of one leg, and she barely stumbles. The troll does not move.

They face one another, Rose's face stony, Vriska's with just the hint of a smile playing along her bright lips.

"Don't worry," she says, and her voice is sickly-sweet. Heavy. "Kanaya can't help it. She has bad taste, and is just a liiiitle bit desperate." She holds up one hand, indicating that said desperation is about an inch high.

"She's rejected you," Rose tells her as calmly as she can.

"So?" Her hand goes to her hip.

"Her taste is better than you think."

She knows it's a lie as she says it. Vriska smiles with something that Rose recognizes, after all.

"Think what you want. Hey, how are your scars?"

"Let me pass," Rose says, and draws herself up to her full height. Her hand closes around an imaginary wand.

Vriska's eyelids droop and flutter. "But that's so booooooooring."

"Of course." She spits venom into the words. "You are standing in a hallway eavesdropping on your hopeless crush. Your life is the archetype of fulfilling recreational activity."

She pictures the door down the hall behind her, firmly shut, and wonders if Kanaya can hear. Probably not; she has never been one to sit by and let others fight around her. "Meddlesome," Vriska would call it. "Assertive," Rose would counter.

They do not have this argument. Instead, Vriska tilts her head to the side, letting her crazed mane flow down and around her shoulder. "Why don't you make me move," she says, the words containing the shudder of a purr. Rose wonders what would happen if she simply tried to walk around.

She meets her glare, dagger for dagger. Heat flushes fresh in her cheeks, still not cooled from her embarrassment. Psychological war games – this is where she excels (they are much easier to think about than a sad troll girl sitting on the floor, hand extended). This is not a contest to be won head-on through metaphorical posturing; tactical retreat disguised as indifference is necessary.

"No," she says. "You are trying to spark a rivalry with me, but it's entirely counterproductive to saving John. Move or I'll take the long way around. It doesn't particularly matter to me."

Rose probably imagines the flash of color between Vriska's lips, her small pointed tongue poking loose and retreating instantly.

Vriska smiles innocently and steps aside.

x

Evolutionary hardwiring in regards to the penis. That's the explanation for this mess.

Rose is currently being productive, in the sense that lying on top of the covers and playing a game of mental battleship with her sexuality is productive.

Studies have shown that heterosexual men are just as likely to search for images of penises as they are for vaginas, and the most likely explanation comes down to evolutionary heritage. The male sex organ has long since been regarded as a means for competition and comparison, and because of this it's linked intrinsically with arousal. This does not mean, of course, that these men secretly want to have intercourse with other men. They just like looking at penises.

Although on average the male sex drive is higher than the female, is it too ridiculous to assume that there could be some sort of parallel for females? A kind of breast envy, waist envy, leg…

Oh god, she's stretching it.

When the door opens she knows it's Jade, because Jade doesn't knock. She feels weight sink onto the edge of her bed and doesn't have to look to see the concerned way her teeth worry her bottom lip.

"So," Jade says, determinedly cheerful, "you missed dinner."

Rose chooses the obvious response. "I wasn't hungry. Besides, I've missed before."

"I know," she says matter-of-factly, "But this time when I talked about bringing you a tray of something, Kanaya asked me specifically not to disturb you. Which of course means something's up, and I came right away."

Rose feels like laughing, and not entirely bitterly. Jade, for all of her ignorance of custom and personal space, is a unique comfort.

"So?" she says, sliding off the bed and forward, until she's kneeling curiously next to Rose's face. She pokes her shoulder three times, each more forcefully than the last. "What's – the – matter?"

Rose sighs with all the world-weariness of a thirteen-year-old former servant of darkness. "I think I hurt Kanaya's feelings."

Jade frowns sympathetically. "She did seem a little quiet today. She wasn't interested in comparing gardening techniques, and we've been planning to do that for ages. What did you do?"

Rose presses a palm to her forehead, closing her eyes. "I…may have accidentally indicated the possibility of a favorable response to her subtle overtures." She does not mention the squeezing of her insides now as she thinks of Kanaya sitting on the floor, rejected again after she must have thought things were going so well. She pictures her book lying open there, pages rumpled and abandoned.

"I'm not completely sure what that means!" Jade says. "But I know it's bugging you since your words got so big there. Why don't you just apologize? She likes you a lot, you know."

Rose winces and lets her hand float back to her side. "That is, unfortunately, the issue."

She doesn't know whether or not she wants Jade to catch her meaning, but after a momentary scrunch of confusion, understanding washes over the girl's face. "Ohhh. _Oh._"

Yes, oh, she thinks. A silly, terrible thing to ruin a friendship over: being liked too much.

"So…you don't like her?"

"I'm very _fond_ of her." She feels like her words are slipping out from under her before she can quite catch them, leaving her hopping from rock to crumbling rock just in time. "I…we have many mutual interests, and I have a great deal of respect for everything she's done. She is intelligent, graceful, understanding…"

"But do you_ like_ her," Jade says. Rose has to look away then, because this island child's expression suggests a hunting dog that's caught a scent.

The issue, of course, isn't that homosexuality is inherently bad. Rose knows this intellectually; she refuses to live in the dark ages. But they have to repopulate. She should marry John if they want a chance of restarting the human race (sans inbreeding).

She could tell herself that this is her only objection, but it would be a lie. Besides all this responsibility, her fragile human psyche betrays her, filling her with fear of the unknown. Social rules inspire effort to avoid the outsider label, the freak-of-nature lifestyle. She's internalized it, she knows, swallowed it whole without giving the world permission to feed it to her.

For one remarkable moment, Rose Lalonde decides to be completely sincere.

"I don't know_ what_ I like."

x

Kanaya is late to the last planning session for the rescue mission. She strides in with all of her usual grace, ignoring Karkat's reprimands, and takes up her place on the opposite side of the room from Rose. She isn't shunning her, exactly; Kanaya is above such childish games. But she doesn't pay her any more attention through the meeting than she does anyone else. Her mouth is pursed uncomfortably, and for the first time since the humans reached the Veil she wears the broken shades.

Karkat kneels on the floor, scribbling additions to his messy diagrams while Sollux sits across from him, watching nothing and no one. Terezi leans on Dave's shoulder like she was born there. Gamzee slouches to the side while Jade nervously tries to start up a conversation, and Vriska and Aradia sit on opposite sides of the circle, wings displayed. Rose thinks of competition and comparison again.

It takes about four more minutes of yelling and cackling before the meeting starts. They proceed in relative peace, discussing specifics and backup plans and preparations.

Eighteen minutes after that, Rose is standing and shouting. This is not her usual tactic. In fact, it couldn't be considered a tactic at all. To be perfectly honest she is extremely angry. It has been building for a long time.

"One of the chief factors that convinced me not to go was that I'm not a space-time player!" she snaps, the rest of the circle eyeing her warily. "I'm not allowed to go, but _she_ is? I'm not allowed to break rules and commit mayhem, but she's forgiven?"

She gestures towards Vriska like flinging acid. The troll crosses her arms, a slow smirk growing on her face.

"Rose-" Aradia tries.

"John is _my_ friend. I can help. I want to help. She's killed one of you and you trust her over me!"

Vriska sighs, stretches, and stands. No one else moves.

"It's not that they trust me," Vriska says. Her lips are twisted, raised more than usual to bare her canines. "It's that I'm waaaaaaaay too useful to leave behind."

Rose whirls on the rest, looking for a contradiction.

"I'm sorry, Rose," Aradia says softly. "But…well, I don't think she has to tell you how much of the luck she has."

Vriska makes a small, satisfied "huh" noise. Like she's _surprised,_ the pompous brat.

"Then let me come too," she says through gritted teeth. Vriska beams at her, fingers twitching at her sides, pressing into her hips.

Terezi shakes her head, and Rose knows she's lost.

"Sorry, Ms. Lavender Gumdrop." She puts two fingers to her temple, face unusually serious. "I know what happens if you go. My view of the Furthest Ring isn't perfect, but I know that no matter the outcome you'll go grimdark again if you come."

She almost tells them she doesn't care, as long as they get John back. As long as they start treating her like she's useful, as long as –

"Good luck," she says, words like steam. "May none of you be caught in their nightmare pits."

She moves to go and feels a hand pulling on her shoulder. White and shining. She stops for a moment, raises her eyes to the ceiling.

"I'm sorry," Rose says, and means it.

She leaves without turning around.

x

She's on the roof when Vriska finds her.

"Don't you have anything else to do? Preparing for a rescue mission, perhaps?" Rose asks. She looks out into the endless expanse over a low wall, not bothering to glance up at the girl while she talks. She is not used to losing control of her emotions. It has to stop.

"I don't really need to," Vriska says, leaning against the wall to her left. "I'm the best we have."

"It's funny. I've been told that you care about John. Apparently someone was misinformed."

That shuts her up for just a moment. Rose barely has time to take a breath and tally the score when Vriska casually says something completely unforgivable, a nasty dark twist to her words that wasn't there before.

"I didn't see you protecting him when he died. Wooow, way to fail your leader."

Deep purple edges her vision. She envisions shadows turning around her ankles.

"_Listen,_ you-" She whirls to face her, only to find that the distance has been closed. Vriska slams her hands down on the wall on each side of her body, her face too close, their legs pushed together, their chests –

"You're different from John," she purrs, breath like stingers, teeth like a shark. Rose feels a shudder run down her back and raises a hand to strike. Vriska grabs her wrist, nails digging into her skin like spider bites. "You can hate."

She leans forward (like Kanaya might have leaned forward, but not at all), and then stops, her open, taunting lips not quite brushing, edges pulled into a black smile. Vriska's eyelashes lower. She breathes, and Rose feels it in her own breast.

Rose's thoughts, fleeting as panicked as they are, threaded through with anger and confusion and curves pressed against her waist and a strange tidal wave of sadness, can be knit into one cohesive "fuck it."

She closes the gap.

Her kissing is messy and inexperienced, but it has teeth.

Rose is on fire. Her mind is fever-burning, smoke and hot air filling her mouth and her lungs and searing goose bumps down her arms. Vriska's arm wraps around her, fingers splaying then digging on her back, clutching her shirt. Her own hand presses into Vriska's shoulder, creeps towards her neck and her hairline and her sharp, scorching face. She does not taste like anything metaphorical. She is moist surging_ heat._

It takes approximately one minute before Rose realizes how deeply wrong this all is.

She leans back, drawing with her Vriska's low moan as she tries to recapture her, shining wet blue lips so close again, teeth –

Rose pushes against her. Vriska ignores it at first, sweeping in to reforge their connection with her own burning, searching for the savagery in Rose's blood.

Rose pushes harder and digs her knee into Vriska's stomach.

It takes her another second, but she finally draws back, face still painted with open-lipped pleasure.

"This isn't," Rose manages in a gasp, hyperaware of Vriska's hand on her chest. "I'm human."

Vriska laughs, a high, screeching thing that grates on Rose's ears and her heart and her inflamed lungs. "_That's_ what you're worried about? Really?" Her other hand creeps up to the back of Rose's neck, cups it harshly, ready to pull her back in.

"No! I meant…this kind of romance isn't in my nature," she says, gathering firmness. She shoves both hands away.

Vriska doesn't even have to say out loud why this claim is ridiculous in context. She just gives her a patronizing smile and leans back in (Rose will never know if Kanaya leaned in, there on the floor when her book fell as she stood).

Rose's angle is precarious, bent back against the wall with bodies pressed so tightly, but she manages a rabbit punch to the neck. Vriska recoils to cough, just for a second, and Rose darts sideways past limbs and horns and heat heat _heat._

"Consider this-" (whatever this is, she doesn't know, she can't think, it's not what she wanted) "-terminated." She goes to the stairs, refusing with all of her strength to look back.

"It's not my fault you rejected her," Vriska calls. "And it's not my fault if you're too stupid to stop rejecting."

The roof is cold. There should be brittle wind, but the atmosphere is thin and impossible as it is, and breathing is hard, breathing –

Rose does not rise to the bait. She does not rise.

x

The rescue team is set to leave in one hour. It consists of the space-time players and Vriska. Rose is going to see them off, and she is going to wish them luck and give them lots of good advice for dealing with the things that once pressed close to her mind, oozing between her neurons like tar. She is going to jump right off of her bed and go to the lab, because they might have questions and it would be incredibly unfair of her to let a bad (terrible awful shattering) event in her personal life dictate whether or not she helps rescue John in any way she can. She has lived through the apocalypse and the death of almost everyone she ever loved. Her teenage angst can wait.

She is going to jump right off this bed immediately. This minute.

Her legs are jelly and she feels phantom limbs pressed against her back.

And it isn't only that she's shaken by what's just happened. It isn't only that she has the distinct impression that most of her allies aren't interested in her help in rescuing her friend. Or that she's reeling from the revelation that _yes, alright, it's safe to say there is some attraction to the same sex her_e and this makes her a liar to poor Kanaya, who –

Oh god, Kanaya. What the hell is she going to do about Kanaya, in all of her conundrum complexities? A devastatingly polite nuclear reaction with the power to rend everything in half and stitch it lovingly together again. Kanaya the brave, the beautiful.

Stop that.

To be quite honest, as gigantic as these issues may seem, they are nothing, _nothing_ compared to what she has done and what she still has to do. She is ashamed of herself for even considering them problematic in context, no matter how poetic she yearns to wax about amber eyes and glowing skin.

There is another thought, coiling and uncoiling somewhere in the bottom of her chest. It's half-formed and born of her desperation to think of something, anything else. A dangerous little thing, it hides between organs and the spaces where gods used to pulsate.

She is afraid that if she goes now, throws herself into saving John as much as she wants to, she is going to entertain this thought. She is going to do something rash. She has made enough ill-planned moves for lifetime, and she needs to regain her previously impervious impulse control. This wisp of an idea, uncollected and skirting her edges, throws their plans to the winds. She _can't,_ as simply and cleanly as that.

"Are you trying to seduce me?" Dave asks.

He stands just inside her doorway. Glasses: check. White suit: check. Unentertaining line of a poker face: also check. Looks like he's ready to go. In the short time she has known him in real life, Rose has done her best to learn his body language, but the only sentiment she can catch here is impatience. Something about the set of his shoulders and the way his hands are shoved so obstinately into his pockets.

"I thought you'd never catch on," she says, and props her head up on a fist.

He looks like he's about to say something in the same vein, but changes his mind. "Genghis Khan wants you in the lab. Something about not being an emotional bitch who's too wrapped up in girly mind games to rescue a troll-ordained matesprit." He tilts his head to the side, which at least gives the illusion of a smug little smirk. "I was all, whoa bro, why're you so down on yourself, that ain't cool."

Rose doesn't smile. She sits up and swings her legs over the side of her bed, pausing to collect her composure. She and Dave are similar in more ways than readily apparent, though they have each spent their lives honing different aspects of their personalities. If it takes her the slightest bit longer to put up the façade, Dave doesn't mention it.

"I suppose since there's not the most infinitesimal chance that you'll be able to succeed without my advice, I'll humor his authoritarianism."

"Yeah okay but what are you _really_ going to do?"

Rose looks up. Dave has not moved an inch.

"Interesting. Since you obviously suspect me of disregarding his orders, why don't we skip the I-know-that-you-know-what-I-know game."

Dave crosses his arms over his chest. "I dunno, I'm not some freaky tortured genius" – it's a lie and they both know it – "but I know you wouldn't just sit here."

Rose leans back to prop herself on her hands, fixing him with a flat look. "What if that's exactly what I'm going to do?"

An eyebrow rises past the rim of his shades. "Okay Rose, I totally believe you."

She is honestly annoyed now. "Your synesthetic friend knows I'd go dark again. I am not without precognitive ability, even without a crystal ball, and I feel the truth in this prediction. It'd do us no good."

"Wow, just vague enough to be intimidating." He turns to go, pressing a hand to her bedpost. "You know, it only takes _one_ sucker to set off the Scratch."

The two of them are more alike than not. Sometimes they exist on eerily similar wavelengths.

"Is that so?" She stands to follow him, resting her hand on the opposite post.

He leaves without bothering to reply.

She twists her wrist back and forth in front of her face as they walk somberly down the hall. Her skin is growing lighter more rapidly now, rocketing back to pallor like the gods have cut their losses.

The niggling idea is still there. She turns it over, examines its underside.

x

Karkat is still shouting insults and last-minute instructions in the lab. Rose wonders if, among his many obvious inferiority complexes, he too is chafing under his inability to go with the others. Not much room for Blood in a place where veins run with ink. Terezi, Gamzee, and Sollux would be equally useless. Once the rescue team enters the pitch of the Ring all advantages of precognition from the outside will also be null and void. Terezi looks uncharacteristically grim, leaning on her cane and staring absently at the ground. Perhaps she sees something she does not like.

Kanaya stands behind her, facing the opposite wall with arms crossed. She has by now washed and repaired her "work clothes," dressed in her sturdy red skirt and black top instead of the variety of colorful dresses she has a penchant for wearing with very little provocation (when they were bored in her respiteblock she had let Rose wear the red one with the leaves, soft and light and stitched from better times).

"About time," Karkat says when he finally notices her. Kanaya looks up, somehow startled, and Rose feels a now-familiar twisting sensation when they make eye contact. Or rather, when Kanaya sees her. Rose can't meet her eyes past the cracked glasses sitting obstinately on her face. They seem to swallow up any expression she might have been wearing, replacing it with a flat, grim determination.

Rose finds she hates them with a surprising passion.

"I'll answer any worryingly repetitive questions you all have in a moment," she deadpans.

Vriska stands close to the corner, still not accepted back into the group circle. Rose goes to her side, aware of each set of eyes on her back like small needles. Except for Kanaya's; past the shades she imagines she can't feel hers at all.

She cuts Vriska off before she can even begin to smirk. "My refusal still stands," she says, keeping her voice low and pointed. "There is no time to try and convince me of what a fool I am. You are malicious, untrustworthy, and utterly without moral or behavioral codes."

She looks up, rolling with the momentum before she loses willpower. "It's because of these traits that you are useful. There's something I need you to do."


	3. Chapter 3

She answers their questions.

Aradia asks several practical ones, and Karkat several annoying ones. Jade keeps an uncharacteristically tight-lipped silence, and Dave and Vriska devote most of their effort to seeming unconcerned. Kanaya asks one or two, and Rose answers as if they are no different coming from her mouth than anyone else's. She does try to let her eyes linger longer, watching Kanaya's face as though transmitting a pesterlog directly into her brain. She doesn't know if the message is received (or for that matter what exactly she is trying to send).

Then everyone moves to the roof.

Terezi and Dave look like they might be going in for a dramatic goodbye hug but then pull a fist-bump fake-out instead. Aradia grips Sollux's hand between her own and they talk quietly, apart from the rest.

Rose takes a steadying breath and goes to Kanaya.

Backlit galaxies turn in the sky. Her skin is bright here and looks as strong as diamonds. She does not react to Rose's approach other than a tightening of her lips that Rose would not have seen at all if she hadn't spent so much time obsessing over the lines of her face, watching the way each thought reflects in her beautiful features and oh god, how could she have been so blind.

She opens her mouth to wish her luck, but it feels too wrong like this.

She reaches up slowly, allowing time for Kanaya to react or reject. Her fingers brush against her cheeks, then gently curl around the plastic on her face, pressing between the arms of the glasses and Kanaya's temples. She pulls off the shades.

Her eyes, of course, are even lovelier than she remembered, with a jagged bite of pain slashed through the irises. Unburied, now.

This feels like the moment for a speech, or an apology. She wants to send Kanaya off with something to _fight _for. She wants to be the beloved one waiting at home, praying for her unscathed return.

Unfortunately, such a reality is out of reach, for more reasons than one.

She doesn't know what to say. Instead she smiles, just barely, and feels her throat clogged with something unfamiliar as she mouths, "Good luck."

Kanaya hesitates. Her emotions are suddenly laid bare, ripped clean of the glasses and with them some invisible protective layer that helped her hold everything in. She swallows and blinks hard.

Karkat's voice is fuzzy in Rose's ears as he tells the team to move out.

Kanaya nods and briefly presses two fingers to Rose's wrist, holding her eyes (they can see each other now; they exist fully on the same plane). Rose wonders if she can feel her pulse.

Kanaya turns to go, meeting the others' determined faces.

They leave for the darkness, almost flying.

x

When they are gone, the roof is silent for a moment. Sollux sighs deeply, almost contentedly. Karkat glares out into the Medium until the tiny specks of their backs are gone. Terezi turns her head expectantly towards Rose.

She goes back down the stairs, through the lab and too-large corridors, into her room and straight back to her bed.

She stares at the ceiling, slowing her breathing, clearing her mind with the same techniques she had used for dark meditation on her own world (it feels so long ago now). Gradually her tumult fades to a subtle buzzing in her fingers as she lets herself forget her legs, her arms, her eyelids.

Rose falls asleep.

She slides into her Derse body not by submerging herself, but by surfacing from placid waters that are not quite her own.

She opens her eyes, surrounded by a violet tower in an alternate universe, and stands from her bed.

They are still whispering into her head, of course; in this place she will never be free of them. She finds them easier to ignore than before, though no less insistent. It's a pity such solidified resistance will go to waste.

She has a set of wands here. Not as powerful as her Thorns, but close. A gift from her former masters. They sit in her top dresser drawer, and Rose can feel their excited hum at her presence. It doesn't matter. She won't take them with her. There is no reason to make this more difficult than it will already be.

She steps through her window, supporting herself on the spell-heavy air that surrounds Derse. The planet lies sprawled beneath her, just visible around her moon. It's almost a pity that the place has to be destroyed in the Scratch, wiped from existence with all of its inhabitants so that she and her friends can live.

Almost.

Rose rockets towards the Ring thinking of the insubstantial concept of heroism.

x

There is always a hard part. She knows that this is probably not The Hard Part, not yet, but it is incredibly taxing. She relies on vague memories to guide her, tips she's stolen from the gods on how to navigate the Ring. She knows it will not be enough, but she will at least get as far as she can by her own power before giving in. She no longer notices the sights and smells and seizure-thoughts that would send most people into a shuddering ball in the corner.

Of course they try to tempt her, lead her astray with promises of power and grandeur and passionate, conquering love. It's all rather repetitive, really.

It's not that she particularly wants what they offer. Power is only a means to an end, for her. But to be honest they don't really need to try and tempt her, because like it or not she will be trapped here without them. She has already lost track of the way back. She makes it a considerable distance on her own, but what does that mean in a space where distance means absolutely nothing?

So she lets herself slip, just a little.

She does not plunge into grimdarkness the way did last time; she dips a foot in and waits to adjust to the frigid cold. Small eyes that are not her own press themselves into her retinas. Her fingerprints itch.

Slowly, she begins to understand again.

Now it gets difficult. She travels through the dark one landmark horror at a time, vision fuzzy, their whispered instructions only as good as a small candle in the woods behind her house. Her progress becomes a cycle of straining her mind to its utmost until she can no longer find her way then submitting just a little bit more to the gods, hungry for the knowledge she needs. It becomes harder and harder to balance between preserving her own consciousness and using the pulsating awareness that surrounds her, beckons her. Thin somethings coil and shake under her soft Derse uniform, twisting beneath her skin.

She knows that they will take her, by the end. It's only a question of when.

She feels her own tendrils extending into a dimension and a direction she had forgotten. She remembers the way.

x

Time runs all wrong here. She is not surprised to find that the rescue team is already at their destination and have been fighting for what feels like a very long time. She does not see them yet, at least not through her own eyes. She feels, quite distinctly, the thrashing of tentacles as Kanaya hacks away with her chainsaw, throbbing masses reforming themselves around Jade's bullet holes. This in itself is wrong; they know they can't defeat these monsters head-on. Obviously something has gone wrong. They have failed to release John and are now doing their best to hold back the terrors as they try again and again. Rose feels the fear quaking their minds as she digs her feelers into their consciousness with the rest of her kin.

John is suspended at the center of the bizarre battlefield, utterly untouched. The gods want him unspoiled. She can feel the hateful sting of his purity, but also its power. The part of her still in her own control is completely, blazingly relieved.

Being gods themselves, Vriska and Aradia are having the most success defending themselves and their psyches, but their strength is fading fast. Kanaya, though far from panic, is having a hard time thinking clearly beyond frenzied sawing and her roaring displayed fangs.

Rose wants to kill them all and desecrate their souls. She also wants to save their lives, so she flies faster.

She bursts into the battle from between the clenching edges of a gigantic valve. She carries with her a flash of silvery power, a volley of magic against its creators to dig and sting and distract. She does not look to her friends for fear of what she will feel as she hears Jade cry her name and Dave telling her to keep fighting as he slices through something that sounds squishy and wet.

John's eyes are closed, hands crossed over his chest. His body glows white, a beacon in the midst of their terror. Wisps of shadow caress the cocoon of light, but do not breach it. He doesn't look the least bit corporeal, or fallible, or goofy. Rose has to fix that.

She soars to his side, watching his face with eyes that want to see him dead and burning the way he burns her, sparks of power crackling invisible against her skin and raising the hairs on her darkening arms.

The others have tried for a resurrection kiss, but it didn't work. The issue isn't that he's dead. He is very much alive. John is simply being held under by the focus of a thousand tiny giants that want him to stay down. That focus needs to be taken away. She pushes aside the terrible things sliding under her fingernails and thinks of playing a silly computer game with a silly boy.

This is probably The Hard Part.

Rose leans in to kiss his forehead, mussing his hairline.

Her body inhales.

Somewhere she imagines she hears Kanaya gasp, and she holds the sound close to her chest as its beats go arrhythmic.

She feels them rushing towards her, pounding, shrieking, tearing; pulled from an untouched, blinding vessel and into a willing one. They smash her, slam-suffocate into her through _pores nose eyes mouth lungs past_ and rip her conscious and her mind to shreds and blow her identity to smithereens. They break her, rend her in two, then again, then again until there is nothing left anymore but the screaming, screaming –

Nothing.

In the end, everything is deep purple.

She turns to face the intruders, a snarl on her lips and burning.

Behind her, the Heir falls like a cut marionette. The Knight moves to catch him faster than her eye can follow.

It does not matter. He will die with the others.

The Seer hears, with perfect clarity, countless voices vying for her attention. They build on and shout over one another, thronging and melding until they form one great Voice, and this voice tells her what she needs to do and the Seer obeys.

She raises her hands, palms forward. Someone shouts her name and then she blows them all back with a dazzling burst that leaves the air ringing.

If she had her wands, this would be better. She would strike fast and hard and blinding, pressing the immeasurable power of the gods that surround her into the tip of a stick, perpetually tighter and smaller until some atom of dark energy explodes and with it the Medium itself. High on deep purple, she feels she could do this, if only she hadn't been too disgustingly _human _to bring the wands.

The Sylph recovers first. She moves doggedly forward, her mouth spewing talk. She looks determined as all hell, a vaguely familiar hardness in her eyes.

"I thought you were better than this." She raises a hand as if to pacify a wild animal. The Seer unironically bares her teeth and it's almost as if this is the second time she has looked at the Sylph so completely while that hand is raised and silent.

Without a conscious thought shadows seep from under her sleeves, spiral from her lips like smoke. They slip and reach and enfold that lovely, slender hand and begin to pull. The Sylph is startled but does not panic; she pulls back and finds they keep climbing, oozing up her arm like oil. More darkness sweeps around her legs, pulling them tight together. Anger scrawls across her face.

"You will release me."

The Seer hears every word, and she wants to hear them again. She wants to grind them from the Sylph's pretty mouth with her own teeth.

_only take what you want and it is yours yours yours_

Shadows knit and bind them, sweeping over both their backs and caressing their cheeks, pulling closer, sooner –

She feels a rush of purpose to her right and drops through dead space, shattering the connection. A flash of orange and blue rams into the spot where she had been half a second ago.

The Thief smiles down at her, curved sword gleaming.

"Vriska, you can't!" The Witch's voice is panicked; the Knight unceremoniously dumps the Heir in her arms and moves to intercept with his inhuman speed, but by this time the Thief is diving, blade forward, wings rigid as a swooping bird of prey.

The Seer does not smile back. Thorned shadows burst from her skin, ride up to meet the attack and she remembers something in that face, a memory bubbling like pitch.

The Knight shoves the Thief out of the way before her torso can be entwined and crushed until the bones snap.

"Don't attack her!" The Sylph's cry more closely resembles a command than a plea, but she in her head, in all of their heads, and what they sound like out loud doesn't matter.

"Listen, get your homicidal urges in check." The Knight speaks from directly behind the Thief, where he holds her arm, but he's speaking to both of them. His voice is practically dead, but she feels the strength of his fear and confusion.

The Thief's hair and eyes are wild, whipped to frenzy like war paint. Her adrenaline is spiking; her clutch is white-knuckled and gleeful on her sword. "No, you dummy, she _asked_ me to."

The Seer feels the clear freeze down each invader's spine.

The Sylph's face is particularly fascinating to watch. The lion-tamer expression loosens, teeters, and falls to the ground like expensive porcelain. She opens her mouth as if to reject this claim, explain exactly why this is a blatant lie and could never have happened. The Seer feels this, sparking through her neurons like marbles colliding. She also feels, in the corners, the truth pressing to make itself known.

As for herself, the Seer does not remember.

The Thief leans forward, yanking herself free. "Hey, you stupid freak!"

She does, however, remember hatred. Burning hands.

She shoots forward, power like missiles like claws. The Thief dances away, lurches up on wings that shine too brightly.

"Stop this!" the Sylph shouts after the two of them as they spiral upwards (or downwards or inwards, it's impossible to tell). She feels the panic, then, that the pretty girl had banished so completely, pushing into her vocal cords.

"If she needs…let them go!" the Maid says, distant and buzzing now.

Then the Thief looks back over her shoulder and says, "I have _all _of them. They keep choosing _me."_

The Seer no longer feels the Sylph past the fury in her own _rip tear kill devour_ veins.

The Thief puts on an extra burst of speed and the Seer responds, calling down curses in ancient tongues.

Things move to intercept her prey, great monstrosities acquiescing to her will. The creature darts around them, dodging and stabbing as she sees fit. Her sparkling trail burns against the Seer's retinas until she can't stand the sight of it _mangle her body cut off those smirking lips_

Then the Thief stops and turns on the spot. Just for a moment she sticks out her childish little_ tongue tear it out swallow it down_ before rocketing forward again, and nothing matters except that she _dies._

She may be a god, but she is surrounded by thousands.

Globs of shadow spurt from the fleshy walls. They criss-cross and harden, forming a web to block their path. The Thief swings wildly but only penetrates the first layer; the darkness sticks to the blade. She tugs it free and turns to face her _death destruction obliteration_ head on.

As the Seer opens her mouth in a final roar, wisps dancing jagged towards her prey, the Thief proves her luck.

Another flash of orange explodes to her left, and the Seer catches sight of wings and sword and sunglasses. A shout, and the Thief darts sideways to answer it. The sprite is gone as soon as it appears, and with it the Thief.

The Seer howls and bolts to the spot. A small, invisible pressure pushes back until she slides through it, following them into a landscape of metal and red heat.

The bubble has the form of LOHAC, and the air is sweat-shimmering. Reality takes the loose dreaming quality of memory; she feels details creating themselves as she looks and dismantling behind her as she speeds past. The sprite is gone; the Thief darts to a giant revolving gear. She touches down and pirouettes to face her pursuer, too focused even to wear her patronizing smirk.

The Seer feels the pulsing consciousness that surrounds them, but it manifests differently in an imitation of a place where it's not meant to exist. The connection to their limbs is strangely muffled, though still stronger than she had ever felt when she was human.

She flings magic. It's met by speeding blue dice and a briefly-summoned shield.

She slams down to the gear's surface. It shudders under the weight of her energy. Somehow her opponent has the dice in her hands again.

"I wonder," the Thief says, "how you even think in there. You don't, do you? You just attack things when they tell you, like a stupid _pet._"

She gives one last guttural warning in the Tongues. Not because the Thief deserves it, but because the gods' will contains an inherent yearning for formality, and when it can be met she can no longer resist.

The Thief continues, too loudly: "You're not a dumbass human anymore. You're not even the same person."

Something is wrong about the words. She feels it, rattling in the small closed boxes where she keeps her memories, but it doesn't matter now. Shadows are sweeping, crawling, pulsing along the gear, wrapping along its edges, and it's only a matter of time before the girl _dies falls shatters on spires of metal and burns_

She inhales and draws herself into her chest, muttering words of power.

The Thief is looking over her head when she says, "It's not the same person."

And she realizes that these are not things the girl would say. Not to her.

Arms wrap around her torso, a body pressing into hers from behind. Something smashes into the back of her knees, bringing her to the ground as a hand slams between her shoulder blades and pushes her forward into a bow.

She cannot feel who or how. She has built a wall of rage and forgotten to leave herself a door, so she roars because it's the only thing she can do, tries to wrench her shadows back so that she can strangle the interloper –

"…be alright," she hears.

The Sylph Kanaya the –

Kanaya leans to whisper something else in her ear, and the Seer feels a cool drop hitting her own cheek from above. The shadows that have risen tall around them mirror the water; they drip and fall without purpose, frozen.

She can't understand the words and suddenly she can't breathe, because she _can't understand –_

_kill them kill them kill them kill_

The Thief makes a sudden movement. A blue monstrosity glows into existence. It is made of wood and metal and a lucky role of the dice. It builds itself around her exposed neck, and she does not need to see the axe gleaming high above her head to know it is there.

And Kanaya, who has cut off one friend's legs and driven a saw through another, who would never hesitate to hurt a friend to save them, holds her steady under the guillotine blade.

"Think of lights," she gasps, and it doesn't mean anything and is ridiculous besides, but the Seer –

The blade comes down with an earsplitting shriek.

A universe away, Rose jolts awake, hands at her neck. She takes in great gulps of air like drowning.

x

There is a moment, short but stretched in an impossible way that she suspects only Dave Strider would understand, in which she is utterly empty. She is free of the gods hanging heavy over her every thought, but she does not remember who she is.

It's odd, forgetting that you are alive.

What's odder is remembering.

x

Almost the moment her pulse settles and she can breathe again, when she doesn't see dark colors fuzzing her vision or hear the edges of her own howling, there is a knock at her door.

"They're back." Terezi sounds smug, her voice already fading down the hallway.

Time runs all wrong in the Ring, but she wishes temporal insubstantiality could have given her a little more time to recover – and prepare.

The imposing hallways seem longer and larger than ever, her footsteps failing to echo. She can't make out the walls in the thin light of the overheads. She walks with her chin tilted at a carefully impervious angle and locks her breathing into a set tempo, despite the occasional drop of her insides when she thinks too far forward through the doorway into the lab and the full view of the universe. She resolves to look said universe in the eye.

When she does arrive, she has a hard time seeing anything at all over the sudden faceful of black hair.

"Rose!" Jade cries with the barest hint of a sob. She nuzzles her face into the front of Rose's shoulder, clinging tightly. "You're okay!"

"Yes," she manages, undeniably relieved to hear the word come out in English. She doesn't know what consequences exist for dreamself suicide, but for now the English is enough. She even feels herself smiling, just a little bit, as Jade presses a sloppy kiss to her cheek. It's only when the girl steps back and grips her shoulders, beaming just like her brother would, that Rose sees Kanaya. She catches her in the moment before she stops moving forward, eyes wide.

She looks unusually tall, back straight and proud. Her expression becomes guarded but not entirely contained, as if she can't quite decide what emotion she is supposed to convey. The fluid change from one unreadable mixture to another is enough to make her look sick to the stomach, and the messy wisps of hair sticking to her forehead suggest that she has not stopped to think. She holds a red-stained tube of lipstick loosely at her side, and her cheeks are practically dry.

"Rose Lalonde," she says, just a bit softer than usual, as Jade steps hesitantly to the side. "That thing you just did was reckless and kind of terrible."

Rose shrugs, a bit helplessly. "I have come to terms with my poor decision-making skills." She tries to keep her eyes from the blood rubbing off on Kanaya's hand.

"I would like to congratulate you on your survival." She slides the tube into her pocket. "But the issue here is that I would also like to punch you very hard in the mouth."

"Quite the conflict of interest," Rose responds.

They watch each other. Rose remembers, at the beginning of their acquaintanceship, how much watching was involved. They have played so many pointless games of chess, laying traps for each other and proving their points with large words and theatrical actions. And to be perfectly honest, Rose regrets none of it.

Kanaya takes two steps towards her. Jade watches warily from the side. Rose does not blame her for being unsure; it seems impossible that she could be privy to their thoughts without looking at Kanaya's bright, angled face and fingers stretched against her skirt (it's red already; it doesn't stain).

Kanaya takes another step. Rose's heart skips a proverbial beat when she reaches out (Kanaya always reaches out) to her chest. She unhooks her glasses from the collar of Rose's shirt where they have hung, forgotten, since the roof.

"I believe," she says, as she sticks an arm of the shades into the waistband of her skirt, "that I still have your book." She smiles then, a shaky, unsure thing, stretched tight around the eyes.

Rose says that yes, yes she does, and she's almost positive that it comes out in fully-formed English with only minimal hiccup.

Kanaya is strong and perpetual and unfathomable, but they are learning to show instead of tell.

She isn't sure which of them moves before she is surrounded by bright and burning warmth, their arms wrapped unapologetically tight around each other. She steps on Kanaya's foot and a horn scrapes against her cheek as Kanaya buries her head in her shoulder. They hold on, crushing until the close.

Rose breathes in. The air tastes like sweat and inky rot and alien flowers as she presses her palm between Kanaya's shoulder blades, and the past _hours-minutes-days_ congeal into the tiny "oh" that falls from her mouth like epiphany. Her fist clenches in the fabric and her eyes scrunch shut as she turns to press her face into Kanaya's hair, lips just open.

They cling to each other like waking up from someone else's nightmare.

x

John recovers.

For a little while everyone is afraid that he won't eat, because the first time Vriska shoves a glob of something into his mouth he throws it back up. Turns out that he just thinks alien jell-o is absolutely disgusting, thank god. He starts a bit dazed and confused but quickly gains steam, convinced that it's kind of hilarious that after Vriska tried to resurrect him, Dave had a go.

"It's not like we got to be picky about it," Dave says, sounding casually defensive, stretched out sideways over Jade's bed with the other three. "Sorry your virginal lip-purity was so heartlessly ganked before your wedding night."

"_Sure,_ Dave," he says with a round giggle that Rose is quickly becoming embarrassingly fond of. He lies between the two of them, trapping Rose's hand in his palm like it's the most natural thing in the world.

"Hey, 's not like macking on you was my top priority here. I was just the closest in a long line of suitors hoping to claim you on your tentacled marriage bed, surrounded by handmaidens straight out of fuckin' Lovecraftian lore."

Jade sits up on his other side, glowing down at the three of them with a toothy smile. "Guys, I'm so happy right now I could explode!"

Dave snorts and Rose makes a pessimistic, snippy remark involving the irony of both the statement and its juxtaposition with their current scenario. At the risk of sounding trite, they are not out of the woods yet. They are not even close to where the trees start thinning. She's not positive they're even on the path because it's practically new moon and they don't know which way is north on this shitty, crayon-colored map.

John smiles and squeezes her hand tighter, even makes a friendly grab for Dave's. Rose can't see if he succeeds or not.

Honestly, they just might be okay.

x

Rose is writing poetry when Kanaya knocks on her door.

She sticks the thin book under her mattress, still pondering the myriad of ways she could phrase the sentiment "I find you exhilarating enough to bend spacetime" and make it less awful.

She checks herself in the mirror, smoothing her hair down in the place where her headband would normally be. She doesn't have much variety in terms of wardrobe anymore, so she chooses to mark the occasion by means of omission. If asked, she would state that her unusually light makeup is the result of casual experimentation, not a ridiculously long time spent with a tube of dark lipstick and too many tissues, trying to get it just right until she gives up entirely.

She opens the door.

Kanaya is wearing an outfit she hasn't seen yet, a short grass-green dress specked with yellow dots at its edges, tied with a pink sash around the waist.

"Kanaya, I'm not sure this is acceptable," she says, stumbling for an appropriate greeting. "I thought we had some sort of inexorable obligation to become Polaroid negatives of one another." When the girl looks bemused Rose clarifies with, "We're supposed to match."

"Oh," she responds, looking very serious. "This is a grave offense indeed. If we do not follow some sort of preordained set theme then who else will?"

"No, Kanaya." She steps out into the hallway. "We cannot thus impose upon the rest of the world. This is our burden to bear, and ours alone."

Kanaya's eyes are very wide and solemn as she nods. She has gotten quite good at this. "How terrible, that you will have to adjust your wardrobe to suit my own ingenuity."

Rose says "ha," and closes the door behind her.

They go quiet, briefly unsure of what's supposed to happen next.

"Have you been to the roof?" Kanaya asks. "Well, besides during the obvious incident. That would be a quantifiably different sort of experience."

"Yes, actually, I have."

"Oh. Would you like to go again?"

Rose hesitates, because she has other memories of the roof, but she is reasonably certain the two incidents cancel each other out. "Lead the way."

"Alright."

They smile at each other, and part of her stutters a little.

In a rush of something that looks like courage, Kanaya grabs her hand.

x

"I have a confession to make," Rose breathes. The two of them lean into the low wall, shoulders brushing, staring out into an unfriendly but beautiful space. Behind passing asteroids the stars are brilliant, and they can just make out the piercing brightness of Skaia in the distance. Rose has a theory about where Kanaya came up with "think of lights," and it involves rooftops and silent goodbyes and now is not the time.

"It may startle you."

"Oh?" Kanaya turns her head, lips just barely quirked.

Rose takes a deep breath. "It turns out that I may not be the quintessential example of human heterosexuality. My god, I am incredibly glad to get that off my chest."

Kanaya laughs, and the sound somehow catches Rose off guard. It occurs to her that, although Kanaya is often happy, she's not the type to laugh loudly and frequently. The sound is wonderful on her ears, lower than she expected, but she would have gotten the same gratification from just that amused smile. With Kanaya, the things that go unspoken are often the most important.

Matching set, indeed.

"Actually, I do have something else to confess," she says, turning to face Kanaya fully. She proceeds delicately, almost gingerly. "During our…in the interim of the period in which we were incommunicado, Vriska and I…there was significant confusion as to…" She resists the urge to play with her hands because this is silly, they have faced so much worse.

"I'm well aware," Kanaya says, tapping an idle finger on the top of the wall. "Of course I am thrilled for you, and should you ever like to discuss a schedule between the two of us-"

"What?" she says, bluntly. It takes her a minute. "Oh. _No._ No, don't…don't concern yourself with that," she says, and now she's doing it too, running a hand along the wall like calming a startled animal. "I'm not looking for that type of relationship, it…must look entirely different from your perspective. I should have thought of that."

Kanaya, naturally, only looks confused, and Rose finds herself laughing quietly, shaking her head. She isn't much of a laughing person either, but _honestly,_ she has overthought enough for a lifetime.

"Karkat told me about your romance system," Kanaya says, still lost, "but I just assumed, after what Vriska said about what happened between you two, that you had decided-"

"It wouldn't work in any case." Rose turns and leans her back against the wall, looking up at the swirling sky. "From my understanding of the quadrant it requires both mutual hatred and respect, and my feelings towards her, especially recently, rocket too strenuously in and out of both those categories."

Kanaya turns with her. She rests her hand over Rose's; the color of her skin is practically back to normal, for a human.

"She did well," she says quietly, summing up exactly what Rose had meant to say.

"Careful, you're becoming more concise," she parries. "You are dancing with wild abandon on the edge of conversational convenience, and it's a long way down."

Then Kanaya leans in to kiss her, so Rose stops talking.

It starts slowly. This is not Rose's first kiss, not anymore, but it might as well be. The experience is mindblowingly different, so much so that Rose wonders if there is a separate word she should be using for "kiss," one that encompasses relief and passion and force and, over all, peace. A sort of spiritual awakening, all bound up in teenage fumblings in the dark.

She runs her hand over Kanaya's hip, tracing the edge of the bone and following the sash to the back.

You are fascinating. You are radiant. You – goddammit you ibend spacetime,/i how –

_Air is electric and time is subpar._

Ah. There it is. Still time for poetry.

Kanaya flings her arms over Rose's shoulders and they move with a new spark, ragged breath and bodies_. Air is electric –_

Kanaya gasps into her mouth, and Rose forgets about the poetry as her thoughts go white.

When they finally draw apart, Kanaya lingers, leaving kisses over her cheeks until Rose bows her head against her shoulder, taking deep, shuddering breaths.

They stand together at the end of a universe. They begin.

(Later, as they are curled up in her room reading a self-indulgent dark romance, tracing absent circles on each other's wrists, Kanaya informs her that she has still reserved that punch.)


End file.
